Shows what's playing as a Discord activity: "Listening to <artist>", with
live album art, track number, and a progress bar. Defaults to iTunes, also
works with VLC, browsers, and any other app that reports now-playing info
to Windows. Runs as a tray icon with a Settings window.
Built with the help of Claude Code (Anthropic's AI coding agent).
- Create a Discord application at discord.com/developers/applications and copy the Application ID.
- Download
iTunes-RPC.zipfrom the latest release and extract it. - Run
install.bat. It asks whether to start at login, then installs.
Installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\iTunes-RPC. On first run, the tray icon opens
Settings automatically so you can paste the Application ID.
Re-running install.bat from a newer release upgrades in place and keeps
your settings.
Run uninstall.bat from the same folder, or uninstall it like any other
app from Windows Settings > Apps > Installed apps. Either way, this stops
the app, removes the autostart shortcut, and deletes the installed files.
Right-click or double-click the tray icon to open Settings:
- Discord Application ID (masked, with a hold-to-reveal Show button and a Paste button)
- Media source: iTunes, or any other app currently reporting now-playing info to Windows (Spotify excluded; it has its own Discord integration)
- Broadcast on/off
- Show track number on/off
- Album art: automatic lookup, a custom image URL, or a static logo only
- Poll interval
- Start at login
Changes apply immediately on Save; the window stays open.
dotnet run --project src\iTunesRPC
Standalone exe:
dotnet publish src\iTunesRPC -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false
Output: src\iTunesRPC\bin\Release\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\publish\.
Requires Discord running, checked at runtime.
- iTunes: polls over COM every 2 seconds for the current track and position. Other apps: reads Windows' System Media Transport Controls.
- Sends the track to Discord as a "Listening to" Rich Presence activity.
- Looks up cover art via Apple's iTunes Search API (album, then track).
- Shows the artist in Discord's compact status tag next to your username.
- The "Listening to" wording isn't officially supported for third-party apps and could change in a future Discord update.
- Album art requires a match on Apple's catalog. Unreleased or mistagged tracks fall back to a static logo.
- Album art can still disappear intermittently on long sessions. See issue #1.
- Track number is only available from iTunes; other media sources don't report it.